The Two Tailed Kats
by Avengers-Captain America
Summary: Four siblings come together from around the world with the help of the Nerve Gear and a new game called SAO. Little do they know, that they and 9,996 other players will be trapped in this game of death, with barely any hope of escape. Join Melony as she fights through the game with her siblings Cale, Chris, and Grae, to end this nightmare. Rated T to be safe
1. Prologue-Link Start!

A/N: As per the norm, I do not own anything that is canon in the anime or the books, including but not limited to: characters, skills, monsters and anything else that is referenced from the SAO universe.

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The clock on the other side of my room reads 8:45 PM. For my oldest brother, it is 12:45 on the launch day of the most anticipated game of all time: Sword Art Online. For the past two years my little brother has been working for Aurgus with their development team. In 15 minutes, the servers will open and everyone who bought a game will be able to enter the latest game, and the most in-depth virtual world yet to be released.

I sit on my bed and pick up a picture of my family. My parents stand in the back with my middle brother, while my youngest brother and sister sit in my brother's and my laps. Everyone has a smile on their face, even my middle brother.

I look at the clock again. 8:49. I heave a sigh. 11 more minutes. I chuckle to myself and put the picture back on its shelf. I kneel on the ground beside my bed and pull out the package that has been sitting there since I got it three days ago. I smile as I re-open it and pull out the Nerve Gear that my brother sent me. He even managed to send a copy of SAO along with it. In his letter he said that he sent three to our family as well, so all five of us kids can play together. My middle brother is still away at school, so he won't be able to log on until Thanksgiving break.

 _Not that he'd let us know if he liked it or not._

I shake the thought out of my head and look at the picture again. I hadn't actually seen my family since that picture was taken this last summer. Moving half way across the country sure has its drawbacks. I put the equipment on my bed and go about setting everything up. Once that is all set, I put the helmet on my head and lay on my bed.

The system seems to recognize this and turns on.

Language: [Japanese] English

I wiggle my fingers, trying to move the selection to English, but nothing happens. Then I move my eyes to the button and focused on the word.

The rest of the set up and calibration goes smoother as I learn how to work the system.

 _Maybe I should have done this earlier and tried some of the simpler games to get used to it…_

I look at the clock in the corner of the screen, which is now the corner of my entire field of vision. 8:58. As soon as the clock reaches 9:00, I close my eyes and say, "Link, start!"

Blue particles blaze past me and I come to what can only be described as a start screen for the game. In front of me are various windows for me to choose different hair and face styles. I went with light-ish brown and long for my hair and vibrant green for my eyes. I gave myself a few inches and set my avatar to 5'8. All that was left was for my name and to choose where to spend my initial stat points. I choose the name Melony, the name I most commonly use on MMO's and spend two points in Agility and one point in Strength. With everything set to go, I start the game and the world of SAO shines to life.

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A/N: Hey, y'all, I'm back! I will try my best not to abandon this story like all my others, and if I happen to find some time and inspiration, I might get on the next chapters to some of the stories I have left behind!


	2. Chapter 1-We're Trapped?

**A/N: I do not own SAO or anything from the novel/manga/anime.**

 **EDIT: I fixed the Menu Windows so that they look better. They're not the best (they look better in the Word document on my computer), but I got them as close as I could with the options available.**

I look around the courtyard and see thousands of other avatars appear and stare at the surroundings in amazement. It's hard to believe that I am actually lying on my bed in my apartment.

After the initial amazement wears off, I get down to the business of finding my siblings. We agreed over e-mail to use specific usernames so that we could find each other. I start for the big statue in the center of the courtyard. They would most likely be drawn to the large land mark as well. I finally make it and try to look around. To my disappointment, even the 6 inches that I had added to my stature was not enough to clear many of the heads around me.

After a few moments, a path through the crowd opens long enough for me to catch a glimpse of an avatar that seems to be waving at me.

"Cale?" I call out to be sure, and the avatar runs toward me followed by two others. "Awesome, we're all here!"

I look at the group and frown. They had all given themselves height as well, leaving me as the shortest avatar.

"Aw, I thought at least one of you would let me be tall!"

Cale laughs and pats me on the back, and a little warning screen flashes in front of him. "Woops, I forgot about that, anyway what I was _going_ to say was, you are still tall, just not taller than any of us."

I continue to sport my frown and give him an irritated groan. Chris then speaks up. "Let's friend each other now and go get some weapons!"

"Good idea," Cale says. Once we finish sending and accepting friend requests, Cale begins walking away from the group and gestures us to follow. "Come on, I know a great place to get some beginner gear!"

With that, the four of us run down alley after alley until Cale comes to a stop. Two other players have just left the stall, a tall red haired samuri, and a shorter black haired man in blue.

 _They must have been beta testers if they knew to come here so fast._

The four of us choose our weapons, Cale choosing a one handed short sword, and I going with a one handed long sword. Chris and Grae both choose daggers. We step away from the stall to allow room for anyone else who might come along and we open our menus to equip our new weapons and choose our skills.

"You guys ready to roll out?" I ask them. The three of them nod, and we all race for the entrance to the fields outside the Town of Beginnings.

Standing at the gate were two NPC's and a player, while other players ran past the NPC guards into the fields where they would gain their first bits of EXP. Suddenly a window pops up in front of me.

Request of Friendship  
from:  
Spence

[Accept] . . Decline

Beside me I hear Grae call out, "Dad! You're playing, too?"

"You bet kiddo! You think you can start a new game without me?" Our father's avatar winks at us and gives us a thumbs up.

I sigh and accept the request. To decline would have only made things awkward. Not that my face can hide my feelings in this game. I try to avoid eye contact, but Spence sees my expression anyway.

"Why the long face? You don't want to play with your dad?"

I stifle an inner groan. "It's just, you always get mad whenever you play games. Try not to freak out this time?"

"Sure thing. You guys ready to go, then?" He puts his hand on his hilt. "You can lead the party Mel."

I smile a little, happy that he's at least trying to make it work. I bring my right hand up and slide it down to bring up my menu. I find the party button, and send an invite out to the four of them. With each of their health bars in my field of vision, I head out the gate with them all behind me.

The creature before us shatters into a billion pieces. "Alright!" Cale calls out. "Only about ten more of these and I'll level up! What about you guys?"

"Pretty close. If we keep this up and we'll be leveled up in no time." Spence swings his sword and slides it into its sheath.

I look at the clock at the bottom of my field of vision. 5:03. One o'clock in the morning for me, and my dad and youngest two siblings no less. I stretch my arms and give a small yawn.

"It's getting pretty late, and I have somewhere I have to be in the morning. I think I'm going to log out and get some real sleep." I wait for my dad to say something, but he's already on the hunt for our next monster. "Yo, Dad… Spence, it's like 1 in the morning for us, you gonna get any sleep tonight?"

"Huh," Spence looks at his clock. "Oh, yeah, I guess that would be a good idea, especially for you two." He points at Grae and Chris. "Come on, it's time to log off."

"Aw! Do we have to?" Grae swings her hands down dramatically.

"Yes, you need sleep."

I smile and shake my head as I turn away to open my menu.

. . . . . . . . . . . Options  
[Tools] . . . . . . Help .  
Character . . . [ . . . . . ]  
Social . . . . . . . . . . .

"Wait, what?"

"What is it sis?" Cale turns around to face me.

"The 'Log out' button is in 'Tools', right?" I ask as I attempt to go through the menu again. Still nothing.

"Yeah, it should be. Here, let me try…" He goes through the same motions I did to find the button labeled, 'Log Out'. "That's weird, it should be right here…"

"Well, can you over ride it? You helped design this game, right?" Spence is now going through the motions again to try and log out.

"I'm not logged in as a GM. And even if I was, we log out the same way players do. I'll send a message to them though and see if they have noticed. We could be the first to try and log off. Most probably won't be logging off for dinner for another half hour at least."

I close my menu, and turn to the group. "So what do we do until then? I'm tired and really need to go to sleep."

"Well, during the beta test, there were some people who would stay in game for days at a time, or at least they would if we didn't go through and kick off anyone who had been on for more than 36 hours at a time. The people working on the server can probably boot us off from there."

"What's your point, other than the fact that _sometime_ someone can come along and log us out manually?"

"Oh, right, the beds at the inns work exactly like real beds. You can sleep in them, and so even though you are still in the game, your mind can still rest. Worst case scenario would be that you get logged off while you are sleeping."

I look back at the trail we followed into the minor dungeon we are standing in now. It took us nearly three hours to get here, and it would probably take us about that long to get back to the Town of Beginnings and rent the rooms we need. I sigh.

"Okay, let's head back to the town of beginnings and get a room."

Cale looks at me. "Hey, don't be so down, the people back at the office have probably gotten my message by now and will probably have the issue fixed well before we get back. Nothing to worry about."

Twenty two minutes into our walk home, I am surrounded by blue light. Just as my mind starts to panic, the blue light disappears, and I am standing in the plaza in the Town of Beginnings. "What the…"

I look around me and see that nearly everyone in the game has been teleported here, possibly, and more than likely, everyone is here. I search wildly for my family and finally find them.

"Cale! What is going on!?"

Cale seems to be as shaken as everyone else. "I-I, I'm not sure, no one ever mentioned this!"

Suddenly, someone calls out something in Japanese.

"What did he say?" I ask my brother.

"He said to loo- Holy cow, look up!" Cale points to the sky past the statue.

WARNING  
System Announcement

"Are they going to tell us what is going on?" Grae asks, clutching my arm. Even though she's taller than me here, as well as in real life, she's still a whole 13 years younger, and very afraid.

Suddenly, the sky turns read with thousands of tiles reading "WARNING; System Announcement". Once the whole sky is blocked out, a red-black ooze starts dripping from the ceiling, and the ooze collects into a hooded figure. Suddenly, the plaza is full of comments, questions, and exclamations that I don't understand. _I really should have taken an online Japanese class or something._

After a moment of this, the hooded figure raises his hands and begins to speak. I don't understand anything he says, but one word, or rather name, does catch my ear.

"Kayaba, isn't that your boss's name, Cale?" I look over at my bilingual brother, and his face is in complete shock.

"What is he saying?" Fear begins to creep into my voice and face.

"He, he says we can't log out, and that it's not a bug or defect. He's saying that it's how he wants the game to be played."

The plaza was alive with voices again. Voices of fear, and apprehension. "We're… trapped?"

"There's more, he says that if our health bar drops to zero, that the Nerve Gear will kill us in real life." He stares at the ground in front of him, then when the hooded figure says something else, he begins opening his menu. "Open your inventory, he says there's something there for us."

I search my inventory, ignoring the items that I gathered from drops, and find a mirror. I click to materialize it, and in the reflection I see my avatar's face. My long light brown hair, vibrant green eyes and strong face. _What is this for?_

Suddenly, I am again surrounded by blue light, and when the light is gone, I look down to orient myself, and see that I am much closer to the ground than before.

"Wha…" I look at the mirror again, and see that my hair is now many shades darker, and my eyes are now the different gradients of blue that I see in the mirror every day. Even my face structure had changed. "What is going on?"

I look around at my family, and see the faces that I had looked at in our family picture five hours ago. The plaza erupts with more voices of confusion, terror, and even anger. I hold my sister close, now that we are close to the same height, it is less awkward.

The hooded figure speaks once again, and vanishes. I look at my brother, his determined face still staring at the spot where his boss had been floating.

"What do we do?" I ask. Chris sits down in shock, and Spence walks away a few steps.

"We… we should rent a couple rooms and get some rest. We can set out to get some EXP early in the morning, while everyone else is asleep."

Spence hears this and marches back to our group. "Didn't you just say that if our HP hits zero that we die? Grae and Chris are NOT going past those walls!"

"Dad!" I exclaim, "they need EXP to get stronger, and besides, they were born in the technology generation, they are probably better at this game than you are!"

Spence's face begins to fume. "I am their father and I say that they do not leave this town."

"Dad, we'd be in a party together, they'll be fine!"

"With your videogame skills? I doubt it."

I stand there in shock. "You said you wouldn't lose it this time!"

"This isn't a game anymore!"

"You know what, _fine!_ I don't need you, I'll be fine on my own!" With that, I waved my hand to bring up the menu, and dissolve the party. I storm off toward the gate and draw my sword.

 **Please R &R! I will try to update as often as I can.**


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